Category Archives: Views from the Street

Don’t Re-hash the Bible. Exposit or Interpret it.

11 Friday Nov 2011

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In my previous post, I focused briefly on sermons that incorporate “wind-ups” that actually “wind-down” sermons. I asserted that one such wind-down occurs when the preacher begins the sermon by re-hashing the biblical text. I made it clear that by “re-hashing” I was referring to a non-interpretive, non-expository walk through the text – sort of a “tour-guide” approach, pointing out this over here, and that over there as we go, providing more background for this, identifying the original significance of that for the ancient community. The kind of thing one finds in a good non-thematic, verse-by-verse Bible commentary.

A shift toward exposition, however, will put the preacher into a slightly different posture – one that allows the text to interpret us. Theologian Karl Barth was a proponent of this approach. According to Barth:

“I have not to talk about scripture but from it. I have not to say something, but merely repeat something. If God alone wants to speak in a sermon, neither theme nor scopus should get in the way….Our task is simply to follow the distinctive movement of thought in the text, to stay with this, and not with a plan that arises out of it.”

Barth’s approach is not far from “re-hashing.” Those who know Barth’s theology will know that he’s worried about too much interpretive intervention by the preacher. He seems to want something fairly close to simply repeating the text. Notice, however, his reference to the ‘movement of thought’ in the text. This is crucial. The preacher doesn’t just “walk through” the text, but does so, over the course of the entire sermon, in a way that helps the listener discover how thought moves in the text, how the semantic motion within the text captures our thinking and re-shapes it in some way.

A shift toward interpretation (hermeneutic) will put the preacher in yet another posture – one that interprets the text by moving the listeners attention toward a particular aspect or dimension of the text in order to draw out a particular meaning for today. In this regard, I posted a few weeks back on five “places” to find a sermon in relation to biblical texts. Each approach assumes that sermon listeners are invited to take a particular perspective or angle of vision on the text. Is the preacher drawing my attention to some analogy to my life in the text (place 1), to a profound historical continuity between Matthew’s church and our church (place 2), to the way the language works and wants to shape us (place 3), to a timeless theological truth (place four), or to a hidden trajectory of meaning we could never have seen, if it weren’t for what’s happening right now in our church or world (place 5). No matter which of these interpretive models is at work, the biblical text will be heard in its fullness, but from a particular hermeneutical perspective.

Re-hashing gives the sermon listener little or nothing of either exposition or interpretation. Re-hashing is largely movement-of-thought-less, and perspective-less, and leaves the listener groping for an angle of vision on the text. When this occurs listeners will provide several of their own…or just check out altogether for lack of focus and direction from the preacher. From great biblical preachers you’ll always hear the text (its content, world, context), but from a particular perspective – one charged with theological meaning and energy.

Some of us are correctly concerned that our listeners don’t get to hear the biblical text often. In a biblically illiterate world, it is natural to feel that by repeating the text in slow motion, we create a better opportunity to hear Scripture and let it soak in.

I have two things to say to this. First, we need to counter the assumption that “front-loading” scripture is the best way to get the text heard. With most biblical texts there’s a lot going on – a lot to take in and process! For the sake of both memory and understanding, it is better to introduce the biblical text in dynamic ways throughout the sermon. Each movement of thought in a sermon can capture some aspect of the text and bring it to life – creating a picture of the whole. For the biblical preacher, there shouldn’t be a single thought communicated that can’t be pegged to something in, under, behind, or in front of the biblical text. We can allow our listeners to re-hear the text dynamically throughout the sermon, instead of at the beginning only. Here’s a picture of this:

Sequence 1 Sequence 2 Sequence 3 Sequence 4
Theology
Message
Experience
Scripture

In this model, each sequence of thought in a sermon contains four things (see The Four Codes of Preaching): 1) a biblical warrant (again, see the five places to get a sermon), 2) a message to our listeners, 3) theological shaping, and 4) some kind of experiential connection or illustration. In this way, scripture is heard strongly throughout the sermon.

Second, we need to work on interpretive reading. If a unit of scripture is read aloud in worship service each week, we can work hard to make it a dynamic, energized, and interpretive reading – one that accents and emphasizes those elements in the text that will be crucial for the sermon. If we are those who read the text aloud, we can provide clues regarding what to listen for and how to hear the text. If we use lay readers, we can work with them each week to insure that this is occurring. A good reading should stand alone, and will do far more than a tour of the text to bring the Bible alive in the hearing of listeners. Even an intervening children’s sermon or anthem between scripture reading and sermon will not dull the impact of Scripture well-read!

Please Tear Your Sermon in Half!

04 Friday Nov 2011

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Ok. Maybe not exactly in half. But I’ve listened to lots of sermons over the years, and I’m worried about the way we begin sermons. I have to say that about three fourths of these sermons would be dramatically improved if the preacher started about two pages (or about 3-5 minutes) into the sermon. I don’t know what it is, but most of us love the “wind-up” not realizing that we are not baseball pitchers; sermon wind-ups are usually sermon “wind-downs.” Here are the most common “wind-up/wind-downs.”

  1. Re-hashing the biblical text. The preacher in this mode drags the listener through a long, expanded, or “imaginative” re-hashing of the text. No. This is not an exposition or interpretation. I’m speaking about a non-interpretive re-hashing of the bits and pieces of the text. Sometimes this never ends and lasts the entire sermon. The preacher forgets to have anything to say to us – or what is commonly called a “message,” and seems to assume that we’ll “get it” if we hear the old, old story re-iterated.
  2. The sermon “set-up.” In this mode, the preacher spends a few minutes exegetically framing the biblical text – providing what the preacher considers useful background information – some interesting tid-bits, mostly exegetical by-products.
  3. Touring the cutting room floor – In this approach, the preacher tells us how he or she arrived at this message – strolling us around the room and pointing out all of the fascinating options left behind on the cutting room floor.
  4. Climbing to higher ground. In this mode, the preacher tells the listener all of the ways she or he has heard this text preached in the past – leading us to the superior ground of their own interpretation.
  5. The rapport story. In this mode, the preacher decides to tell a personal story. This is not a story told about someone or something else, narrated through the lens of the preacher’s experience, but a story about the preacher’s experience (of self, other, family, sports, memory, life, etc.). This story might contain a catchy thematic hook designed to capture our interest. Often, the story goes on interminably. No matter what they are supposed to be illustrating, these wind-up stories seem to be saying something else, namely: “Welcome to my world – please like me and be my friend while I preach this sermon.” When this occurs over and over, genuine sermon content is sacrificed to a rather contrived rapport-building exercise. 
  6. The message grope – In my experience this is the most common “wind-up/wind-down.” When beginning to write the sermon the preacher didn’t really have a clue what to say. The preacher just started writing or speaking, hoping a message would pop out. By the time a message finally arrived, several minutes had been wasted groping one’s way toward it, and most of the energy of the sermon had evaporated. For whatever reason, rather than removing this material, it is kept.

Anton Chekov’s famous advice to writers comes immediately to mind: “Tear out the first half of your story; you’ll only have to change a few things in the beginning of the second half and the story will be perfectly clear.” This is serious and solid advice for many preachers. Once we’ve written the sermon, or organized it and preached it through a few times extemporaneously, it is a good idea to ask ourselves whether, in fact, the sermon would be better if we started it further in – on page two or three. If we did this on a regular basis, I believe we’d avoid many of the “wind-up/wind-downs” that currently sap the energy at the beginnings of our sermons.

Is counterculturalism killing us?

11 Monday Jul 2011

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In the current generation, the most predominant and popular image for the minister might be labeled “minister as counterculturalist.” William Willimon is perhaps the strongest proponent of this view, taking many of his ideas from the work of theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas. (cf. Hauerwas and Willimon, 1989, Willimon, 2000). Charles Colson (2003), Walter Brueggemann, (1978, 1997, 2010), Rodney Clapp (1996), and John Howard Yoder (1994) are other prominent spokespersons with different theological perspectives who have articulated a similar view of the minister.

For those who adopt this image, the minister is a countercultural leader. Ministers are “aliens and exiles” (I Pet. 2;11) who march to the beat of a different drummer. They understand the current-situation as post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom, and post-denominational. In this situation, the church is freed from its overly comfortable co-optation by the dominant culture, and can now recover and express its true countercultural genius. The minister will not look or act like anyone else (managers, therapists, etc.) because the minister is ordained to be an utterly unique person whose actions and words will always seem odd according to prevailing cultural standards and mores. The gospel demands radically distinct forms of behavior and speech, including pacifism, non-violent resistance to principalities and powers, an insistence on the oddness of biblical language, the rejection of any attempt to translate biblical language and categories into cultural terms, and an inculturationist or catechetical approach to liturgics, preaching, and evangelism.

The idea of the minister as counterculturalist is built on a particular kind of narrative theological method sometimes called the “Yale school” of narrative theology. (Comstock, 1986). Ministers attracted to this theological method believe that all religions, denominations, and cultural worldviews are defined by the way that they narrate the world. In today’s context, larger “meta-narratives” such as the metanarratives of Enlightenment, Socialism, Capitalism, and Christianity, have been reduced in size and importance and now take their place alongside other cultural and social narratives. These narratives are like games, or “language-games,” generating very different worldviews.

In this situation, ministers are radical pluralists. They believe that the rules and concepts for one game cannot be translated into the rules and concepts of another. The world is a pluralistic arena of competing language games or worldviews, some religious and some not. In this situation, the Christian minister is obliged to represent the Christian language game as forcefully and conspicuously as possible. The odd grammar of the Christian language game, provided by scripture and tradition, must be made larger, more consistent, and more univocal.

But is this, in fact, the best way to read the situation in the world (and church) today? Instead of a situation of competing narratives, in which we must learn to compete better than anyone else and win, it appears to me that our situation, both inside the church and in the surrounding culture is one of divisive, and increasingly violent cultural-narrative entrenchment. The church’s current social and political context and its inner life has become a potentially dangerous and divisive climate of competing and mutually exclusive narratives and monologues. Entrenchment within different and competing cultural narratives is destroying the fabric of life both inside and outside the church, creating a situation in which “countering” others has been turned into a force for division across religions and cultures that has tremendous destructive potential.

In today’s popular media, countering opposing narratives has become the prevailing model for political rhetoric. Increasingly media outlets are adopting strict, consistent ideological/narrative frameworks. It is now evident that “counter-speaking” is what sells. People tend to seek out like-minded, self-referential news sources that are defined by their stances against certain others. In a nutshell, counterculture has been commodified and largely co-opted by the prevailing culture. Paradoxically, counterculturalist ministry mirrors this prevailing cultural norm, in which competing monologues vie for control and power as commodities within the marketplace of ideas. And it trains communicants in this kind of behavior.

For ministers to adopt the image of minister as counterculturalist is to adopt the predominant cultural image for courage and “authenticity” within popular culture itself.

I do not wish to wade into arguments regarding whether, in fact, it is possible to be un-tainted by other cultural currents – whether, in fact a counter-cultural posture is even possible. Kathryn Tanner has demonstrated adequately the difficulties inherent in all culturally separatist thinking. (Tanner, 1997) Neither do I wish to argue against the importance of standing up to unjust or potentially violent cultural or religious ideas of impulses. A critical posture to dangerous or violent worldviews is a crucial component of any minister’s identity.

I only wish to argue that in our present context it takes more courage, and requires more genuine Christian authenticity to adopt what may, at first glance, seem to be a less exciting image for the minister: something like “the minister as informed conversation partner.” What is needed most in this generation are not narrativists, but pragmatists. In a situation of competing cultural narratives or worldviews, what is needed are not those who are focused on further cultural-narrative entrenchment, but those who are able to relate and connect worldviews, and negotiate shared meaning and truth across differences on behalf of the common flourishing of all..

Another way of putting this is to say that we need dynamic pluralists, not radical pluralists. The dynamic pluralist, like the radical pluralist, agrees that each worldview or religion has a narrative quality including rules, practices, and symbols often shaped by a long history. Where the dynamic pluralist disagrees with the radical pluralist is on the possibility of communication and correlation across worldviews. For the dynamic pluralist, there is much to be learned from strangers who are living according to the rules, practices, and symbols of other language games. In fact, the dynamic pluralist sees all of us as constantly conversing between, correlating, and re-framing multiple worldviews. This is not to completely de-center the Christian worldview. Rather, it is to insist on the permeability of the boundaries of that worldview, and to seek to honor the way in which Christianity is, in fact, always “othering” itself – seeking its deeper identity through creative relationships with those who are different.

(THIS POST IS EXCERPTED FROM VARIOUS PARTS OF A BOOK CHAPTER THAT IS PART OF A BOOK PROPOSAL – IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENT WELCOMED)